Composition and Lighting Research

 Ok, so I've got the color grading down sort of but for some reason or another, I'm still bored out of my mind with my shots. Why is that? Even though I've gone through the trouble of using a lighting kit, I'm not understanding the best way to utilize it and therefore, I end up with ugly shots with the huge issue of unmotivated lighting that threatens to tear apart the natural feel of any given scene. I'm going to be honest, a large part of why I did not do this research earlier was because I had too much ego as an individual aspiring artist to ever get directly inspired and in such a blatant way as to watch a video. I thought my analysis skills of cinema were good enough to make it so that what I understood in other films, I could translate directly to my own projects. But that wasn't the case and my scenes lacked a natural rhythm that professional scenes seemed to have, the cuts were awkward and the lighting made things look worse than better. 

What was going on? 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0suVZjz3_Uw&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KVBc2Pg81rw&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

Though I love the visual arts and I like spending my time analyzing visual media, for some reason, I never thought to add depth to my backgrounds or even background lighting. The rule of thirds was something I haphazardly followed with no idea of if I was adhering to it correctly and my shots were completely devoid of any semblance of leading lines. And when they did incidentally appear, they would always look weird. 

I learned about the concept of leading lines from one of the videos as well as background lighting that adds depth to a scene. In addition, the concept of motivated lighting which I had already implemented into my filmmaking process. The rule of thirds seems like such an easy way of framing shots but it's something that quickly becomes monotonous, especially if you're not aware of its actual storytelling implications. Subjects in the center are strong, subjects that occupy the one of the four corners of the middle third are in focus, but certain films will play with these ideas to tell a story. And that's something that even though I've considered, have had a very difficult time with. Because now, it's less about shooting and more about setting up the shot and truth be told, it's not a super exciting process, especially when I don't have to budget to make the sets I want and get the props I want.

But in the end, these tips have massively helped me understand just how limited my toolbox is—and what kind of things I can do to improve. I'm looking forward to applying some of these skills in the project and future works.